The Linux Administration group is for the discussion of technical issues technical issues that arise during the administration of Linux systems, including maintaining the operating system and supporting end-user applications.

Killing Child Processes Cleanly

I'd like to be able to kill a whole process tree without the child processes becoming orphaned. What's the best way to do this with any common scripting language? I'm looking for a fairly simple solution, if one exists.

First of all try to remove some unused files if possible.
Also, you can move some unused files to other partition and create symbolic
link
if partition is a physical, backup it, then create a new and larger
partition, then restore backup
if you are using "LVM" try to add partition.

First shutdown as many applications as possible, especially mail and
databases, but anything which is using the drives. Then buy some time by
removing old log files.

You should have enough room to mount a temporary drive if you are fast
enough and move some data off, generally seldom used home directories,
but it depends on the system what you can move off.

Then follow the directions from Jalal.

When linux runs out of room it can start to panic and the linux file
system can get messed up, you want to move fast to get some room back.
You messed up not catching this long before you had a problem.